That Is Your Job

That is your job, the mama tells us at school. We feed her child breakfast, lunch, and an after school snack free of charge. We give her child a safe place to be, while she has seven hours of freedom free of charge. We love her child the best we can, and demonstrate other options, free of charge. It is not the free of charge aspect that bothers me. It is the fact that we are raising this child, And mad mama is over the moon angry with us because she has not done anything to help her child Learn his ABC’s, practice reading, learn to tell time, or behave in any way to get along well with others. She has come in today to rant and rave and accuse, ending with, “that is your job.” I wish we were an orphanage, but we are not. We only have seven hours of her child’s day; she has seventeen. We have little respect from her child, because we have none from her. We have little influence over her child, because he wants to be like his parent. Curiously, I thought parents wanted to be the manager of their child’s character building. I thought parents lived to instill honesty, kindness, empathy, and respect. I was wrong. Sometimes Mama Bear is an angry bully, throwing her weight around in a nasty way. A widely out-of-control child has a parent who approaches their kindergarten teacher With, “good luck, he is awful, he got kicked out of two preschools, I cannot handle him,” Not quietly, but loudly and proudly, for all the other parents to hear, as if it is a hilarious thing. When a parent role models lying, stealing, and cheating, it is an uphill battle to help the child re-learn honesty, empathy, and respect. It is difficult for a child to unlearn to immediately respond with mean looks, angry outbursts, stomping feet, pouting feet and put down ways. It is a struggle to unlearn ineffective ways of doing things when they have seen and practiced it for five or six years, and it has worked for them in their home. If you have been swearing since age two, and getting laughs, it is confusing to come to school and get the opposite reaction. Worse yet, If you cannot give the swearing up, you are not invited to birthday parties because children talk, and they tell everything. The trickiest part of teaching is for teachers to help students re-learn everything they know as truth, without putting down their parents’ ways. Please have faith that it can be done because it can. I have seen it done. It often takes the whole school year but it is worth it. Choose wisely parents, your children want to make friends, they want to be liked. They want respect. Please note that if their arsenal of words are peppered with cussing, they are given a wide berth by their peers and they are not invited to parties or play dates. Mom, it is difficult for your child to unlearn attitudes, opinions, and prejudices you have instilled on him. If you say something derogatory about a certain race or religion, guess what he thinks? He thinks it is okay, so he does it, and another child’s heart breaks and the classmate bystanders do Not play with him, labeling him a mean boy. Your child is watching, and learning, doing what you do. Every eye roll, every sneer, every angry outburst is being registered and practiced. The best thing you can do for your child is to realize his social, and emotional health is not a school’s job. His spiritual beliefs, humanitarian efforts, and empathetic ways is not our job. It is your job. Do him a favor. Stop being his only friend. Please be his mother, So he can have friends.